A scrawled message to no one in particular

3liza:

haveheartbeast-willtravel:

Okay, I like that Tor is being spread around, but this idea that online petitions do nothing and isn’t taken seriously needs to get out.
You are aware that without online petitions that SOPA would have been voted on and passed, aren’t you? You’re also aware that with enough pressure with online petitions governments have backed down on other things. Believe it or not politicians do pay attention to online petitions and emails sent to them, it’s just that you need the numbers behind them to have someone pay attention. And if you’re telling people that their voice doesn’t matter in a petition then of course less people are going to sign it and of course there’s going to be less power behind it. You are hurting your own cause by telling people that their petitioning doesn’t matter. Stop telling people that that doesn’t matter.
In fact this entire thing saying that stuff online doesn’t matter is ridiculous. When people sign petitions online they are still saying that if their representative is going to support something they will also pull their support from when they vote too and will vote for someone else. They are still fully capable of boycotting things when they say they will online.
Why are you acting like doing something on the internet is useless when we have evidence to the contrary?

I would LOVE to see some proof. If online petitions actually work I’m going to have a much better day.
This is the only support I’ve seen for online petitions that cites any examples, and it’s on a blog run by an online petition company who stands to gain or lose substantial amounts of ad revenue from whether or not people use online petitions. And all the examples there do not actually include data that cites the petitions as effective. EG, no policy-makers specifically pointing at the petitions as effective, etc.
Slacktivism is poisonous because it’s placebo activism.
EDIT: And the SOPA shit “worked” because it was backed by giant corporations and organizations who threw the weight of their money against it. Wikipedia leaving GoDaddy alone was insanely effective. Google putting shit on their front page was effective. Wikipedia and Tumblr blacking out was effective.

http://www2.macleans.ca/2011/09/21/slacktivism-defeats-lawful-access/
http://www.frogloop.com/care2blog/2010/4/28/slacktivism-why-snopes-got-it-wrong-about-internet-petitions.html
Tell me if the second link is working or not, but if it’s the link I think it is it should have cited sources on why slacktivism and online petitions in general do work.
This is also a good article http://mashable.com/2011/10/24/slactivism-cause-engagement/ however it doesn’t deal with online petitions being effective by themselves.
I also sadly cannot get the page you linked to to load, any idea why that might be happening? I ask because it doesn’t seem to be my internet, it might just be something wrong with the link.
Also, yes big organizations backed it up, but they wouldn’t have gotten anywhere as far as it did without the peoples’ support and most of the support was just online as far as I know.

haveheartbeast-willtravel:

Okay, I like that Tor is being spread around, but this idea that online petitions do nothing and isn’t taken seriously needs to get out.

You are aware that without online petitions that SOPA would have been voted on and passed, aren’t you? You’re also aware that with enough pressure with online petitions governments have backed down on other things. Believe it or not politicians do pay attention to online petitions and emails sent to them, it’s just that you need the numbers behind them to have someone pay attention. And if you’re telling people that their voice doesn’t matter in a petition then of course less people are going to sign it and of course there’s going to be less power behind it. You are hurting your own cause by telling people that their petitioning doesn’t matter. Stop telling people that that doesn’t matter.

In fact this entire thing saying that stuff online doesn’t matter is ridiculous. When people sign petitions online they are still saying that if their representative is going to support something they will also pull their support from when they vote too and will vote for someone else. They are still fully capable of boycotting things when they say they will online.

Why are you acting like doing something on the internet is useless when we have evidence to the contrary?

I would LOVE to see some proof. If online petitions actually work I’m going to have a much better day.

This is the only support I’ve seen for online petitions that cites any examples, and it’s on a blog run by an online petition company who stands to gain or lose substantial amounts of ad revenue from whether or not people use online petitions. And all the examples there do not actually include data that cites the petitions as effective. EG, no policy-makers specifically pointing at the petitions as effective, etc.

Slacktivism is poisonous because it’s placebo activism.

EDIT: And the SOPA shit “worked” because it was backed by giant corporations and organizations who threw the weight of their money against it. Wikipedia leaving GoDaddy alone was insanely effective. Google putting shit on their front page was effective. Wikipedia and Tumblr blacking out was effective.

http://www2.macleans.ca/2011/09/21/slacktivism-defeats-lawful-access/

http://www.frogloop.com/care2blog/2010/4/28/slacktivism-why-snopes-got-it-wrong-about-internet-petitions.html

Tell me if the second link is working or not, but if it’s the link I think it is it should have cited sources on why slacktivism and online petitions in general do work.

This is also a good article http://mashable.com/2011/10/24/slactivism-cause-engagement/ however it doesn’t deal with online petitions being effective by themselves.

I also sadly cannot get the page you linked to to load, any idea why that might be happening? I ask because it doesn’t seem to be my internet, it might just be something wrong with the link.

Also, yes big organizations backed it up, but they wouldn’t have gotten anywhere as far as it did without the peoples’ support and most of the support was just online as far as I know.